


Doctor Pepperony Short Fic Collection

by 51PegasiB



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Incredible Hulk (2008)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Other, Polyamory, Random & Short
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-01-29
Updated: 2014-01-29
Packaged: 2018-01-10 10:20:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 3,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1158490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/51PegasiB/pseuds/51PegasiB
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Collection of short fics I wrote to prompts from folks on tumblr. Most of them are fluffy and sweet. They're not necessarily in the continuity of any other fic I've written.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Tony is a blanket hog

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony doesn't get to sleep in the middle.

"No! I want to sleep in the middle," Tony almost whined. 

In his defense, it had been a very long day, in which he had saved the city three times by his own count, though everyone else insisted it was only twice.

"Pepper sleeps in the middle," Bruce insisted.

"No, it’s your turn, Bruce," Pepper stood aside and gestured. Bruce just smiled and kissed her on the cheek. 

"I get half-panicked if I sleep in the middle. You actually enjoy it. I cede my turn to you," he said, sitting heavily on the end of the bed and scooting backwards over the covers on the far edge. 

"Cede your turn to ME!" said Tony. 

"Nope," he said. "When you get into the middle, you get too warm and you kick all the covers off."

"Yes," added Pepper. "Or you roll over and over till you’re cocooned in them and we don’t get any."

"But…" Tony protested. 

Pepper held up a finger to silence him. "One more word and you go sleep elsewhere, and I stay here and cuddle Bruce all by myself."

Tony shut up and let Pepper into the middle of the bed, but he sulked about it. He used to always get his way. Now Bruce and Pepper seemed to be the ones who always got their way. It bothered Tony less than he would’ve thought, which confused him and when he got confused, he got irritable. He was sure he'd be up half the night just thinking about the conundrum the two of them represented, but he drifted off to sleep fairly quickly, in truth.

When he woke the next day, he was rolled in the blankets like a cocoon, and the others were gone. He tried to get out, but they had somehow tied him into the blankets. 

He rolled over, and there was a note on the bedside table, propped up where he would see it.

"Gone to get breakfast. Stay Put. - B & P"

He sighed and then grinned. He flolloped over to the center of the bed. “Hey, Jarvis, can you project that article I was reading yesterday on the ceiling maybe?” 

He read and waited for them to get back.

It really didn’t bother him that they always got their way.


	2. Favorite Kisses

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony's three favorite kisses that he can remember.

Tony’s first favorite kiss was on the roof. The city was still suffering the aftermath of his battle with Vanko, and he had rescued Pepper from things that blew up. It was dramatic, and sweeping, and then Pepper quit, and then he kissed her and it was perfect.

Till Rhodey had talked, of course. 

Pepper laughed remembering that moment with Rhodey, on the roof, the fairgrounds ablaze in the distance, but Tony mostly liked remembering what came before and what came after.

Tony’s next favorite kiss happened in a crater left by the body of the Hulk, as he’d fallen from leaping onto a Hydra helicopter, bringing the tail of the copter down with it. 

Tony had landed by the Hulk. He liked to be there when Bruce came back to himself. And he didn’t fear the Hulk the way some of his teammates did.

He flipped back the faceplate of the suit, and was hovering over Bruce when his eyes fluttered open, sprawled, naked, on the concrete. 

Bruce grinned, and propped himself tiredly on his elbows.

"You’re always here," he said, sounding bewildered.

"I can leave, if you want," Tony responded, uncertainly.

"No!" Bruce said, with an unusual amount of force for his post-hulk self. 

He reached out for Tony, and Tony had gone to him and their lips met before he knew what had happened. 

He still couldn’t swear to which of them had initiated it.

The next favorite kiss, he hadn’t been there in person, for, but he had had Jarvis bring it up on the surveillance footage, when Pepper had let him know it happened and watched it over and over again, from as many angles as were available.

Pepper cornering Bruce, who looked alarm till their lips met, then stunned, then happier than Tony had ever seen him when Pepper spoke, reassuring him. 

After all, he knew how reassuring Pepper could be, and he loved to see that at work on Bruce’s deep tensions.

They had all been favorite kisses, since then. He had long since lost count.


	3. A little quiet time while the engineer is away

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony is away and Bruce and Pepper relax in his absence.

Tony was gone, at a conference. He had tried to talk them both into coming along, which was really sweet, honestly, but they were still trying to be kind of discrete and there is nothing discrete about a billionaire engineer, his CEO girlfriend and his pet scientist all sharing a suite, especially not at a conference where half the world’s great brains were meeting to discuss engineering solutions for clean energy.

Bruce had even declined to go. He still wasn’t comfortable at gatherings like that. 

Tony’s whiny, bad tempered loss was Pepper’s gain, she thought, as she lay in bed, feeling positively warm and comfortable and relaxed. She and Bruce had eaten dinner with champagne on a blanket in the living room, and then he had brought her back to the bedroom and undressed her slowly, kissing parts of her as he had exposed them. Now she was getting a massage. 

"Have you actually studied how to do this?" she asked. 

"A little," he said, "in India. Not as much as I would’ve liked. I was too…nervous. It didn’t seem worth the risk."

"But you were around people all the time, there."

"Sure. I was helping them. That was different. Massage is…I mean it can be helpful, in certain circumstances, but it’s not medicine per se, and I always imagined hulking-out mid massage and, well, that’d go badly."

"How do you know it would?" 

"Well, I assume," he said.

Pepper lay in the bed as he worked on each of her legs in turn and then her arms. She breathed deeply. She thought she could smell him. Clean man scent. She reached a hand up and ran fingers through his chest hair. He smiled and gave a rumbly sigh that was almost a purr.

"Mostly, I’m good at it because I understand bodies," he said. "I know how they’re put together…how they work. That’s something masseurs learn, you know, at massage school, but I already knew it."

"I’ll say you do," she said. She slid her hand up to wrap around the back of his neck and draw him down into a long kiss. Bruce didn’t stop rubbing her skin, after that, but his hands shifted and it couldn’t strictly be called a massage any more.


	4. Ordering pizza should not be this complicated

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Relationships come with compromises on pizza toppings and sometimes modes of living.

"We only need one pizza." Bruce was looking back and forth between the other two. "Seriously. One large."

"No, we don’t. We should just get three like we always do, or there’s going to be drama," Tony said. 

"Sure. Mostly from you," Pepper interjected.

"If we get more than one, we’ll be eating pizza for the next three days, and I don’t want to." Said Bruce.

"I’ll eat it all," Tony declared.

"If you’ll eat it all as leftovers, we can just agree on one thing and you’ll eat it, clearly," said Bruce. 

Pepper sighed.

"Leftovers are different. Cold pizza is it's own thing," said Tony.

"Are you honestly telling me that three adults can’t compromise on pizza toppings?" Bruce wasn't agitated. A despairing edge crept into his voice.

"Why compromise when you don’t have to?" Pepper interjected. 

"Yeah. I have money. Lots of money! Let’s get fifteen pizzas!” Tony said, throwing up his hands.

"No. This is ridiculous. Think of the children starving in India.” Bruce uttered the cliché with a fervor that breathed life into it.

"I can have Happy fly the leftovers to them tomorrow, if you want," Tony said.

Bruce gritted his teeth. “The point is, you don’t have to engage in so much conspicuous consumption.”

Tony looked at him in disbelief. Pepper actually laughed. 

"Seriously?" Tony asked. "Have you MET me? Have you seen the fifteen cars and the mansion in Malibu and the building here and the flat in Monaco and, you know, the PLANE?"

Bruce sighed, then frowned, his face tense with disapproval and frustration. Pepper looked away and bit her lip.

"It is true that your consumption gets a lot more conspicuous than way too much pizza," Bruce admitted. "But you have to start learning moderation somewhere."

"Why?"

Bruce's look grew softer as he held Tony's gaze with his own. "Because you’re in a relationship with me, now, and it’s important to me." 

Pepper looked up from where she’d been flipping through the pizza place’s menu on a tablet. She got up and wrapped her arms around Bruce. He looked at her almost pleadingly. She smiled and kissed him. “Thank you for articulating it so clearly,” she said.

Tony was half-sputtering. “So I can never get what I want on my pizza again?” 

"Actually, we can get the pizza half and half. I was just looking at the menu. What would you guys say to half what each of you normally gets?"

Bruce turned to her, concerned. “What about you?” 

"Well, I don’t mind. I’m going to get a salad, too. And next time, one of you can give up your half for my super-veggie, if you’re feeling chivalrous."

She knew that Tony would make big noises about doing it, but Bruce would actually do it. She watched him relax. “That sounds good. Thank you. Yes.” 

"FINALLY!" Tony said, loudly. He lunged for the tablet to punch in the order. "What kind of salad?"

"Greek. I already put it in." 

While they waited for it, Tony drank and pouted. “What am I going to eat for breakfast, now?”

Bruce walked by and ruffled his hair. “I’ll make you something.”

"Oooh. The stuff you cook is better than cold pizza.”

Bruce rolled his eyes. “Gee. Thanks.” 

Pepper laughed. "Hey, cold pizza is pretty far up there, in Tony’s book. It was an actual compliment."

Bruce looked between Pepper’s earnest gaze and where Tony was nodding solemnly. He laughed and shook his head.

"What?" Tony demanded.

"Nothing."

"WHAT?" he said, more insistently.

"Fifteen cars, the most expensive whiskey in the world,” Bruce recited slowly, “your own jet and a cold slice of pizza is still your standard for culinary excellence."

Pepper was laughing, again.

"I may be a billionaire, but I’m a red-blooded American male, god damn it."

"What does that make me?" Bruce asked. 

"Unbelievably sexy and wonderful to have around the house," interjected Pepper, getting her giggles under control.

"She’s not wrong. Wait. What does that make me?" Tony demanded.

"The same, just in a different way," she said. 

"Well, aren’t you a lucky girl?" he responded, taking a hold of her hips and drawing her in for a kiss.

She grinned at him and slid her arms around his waist. "I’m not the only one who’s lucky." 

"Sure. Bruce is lucky too."

They both laughed at him and Bruce chucked a dishtowel at his head. “We’re all lucky,” he said.

"Sure. Cause look how many cars we have," Tony was chuckling.

"Yeah. Yeah. That too," said Bruce.


	5. A very Potts Christmas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bruce doesn't know why he let himself be roped into joining Tony and Pepper at Pepper's mom's for Christmas, but he winds up pretty glad he tagged along.

"You come help me, young man," Margaret Potts said to Bruce. "Virginia tells me you’re awfully handy in the kitchen."

"How would *she* know?" asked Tony. "She’s seen the inside of a kitchen less often than…" his words were abruptly muffled by Pepper’s hand. Pepper was still smiling brilliantly, the hand that wasn’t stifiling Tony resting on his shoulder in a way that made it look like it wasn’t a death grip, though the pain betrayed itself around Tony’s eyes. 

"Go help Mom," she said to Bruce. "I’m begging you."

Bruce chuckled and went, suffering himself to be wrapped in a ruffly red apron and set on peeling a mountain of potatoes. 

"I’m sure she doesn’t eat enough. Especially now that they’re living in New York, you know," Pepper’s mom said to Bruce as she expertly dealt with several pots on the stovetop and basted the turkey before turning to the task of mixing dough for pie crust. 

"I’ve never observed any sign of malnutrition," said Bruce with a smile, dealing with the potatoes efficiently and cutting them into chunks of the same size before putting them in the water already heating on the stove. 

"Oh, that’s right. She told me you were a doctor. And you spent some time helping poor folks in Indonesia or somewhere."

"India," supplied Bruce.

"That was it." She didn’t seem phased by her error or by the 8000 or so kilometers between the two countries. 

"I’m not a real doctor, though. I studied physics, primarily. I do have a doctorate, and I was, uh…doing medical work in Kolkata," said Bruce.

Margaret Potts just breezed on, using her apparently limitless capacity to ignore information she didn’t know how to respond to. “I just think it’s so charitable of you to help the less fortunate with your schooling,” she said.

Bruce had been through nearly forty-eight hours of conversations like this, by this point, and didn’t bother to explain that he hadn’t been any too fortunate himself at the time. “Uh…thank you,” he said. 

"It’s truly Christian of you," she added, carefully rolling out rounds for her pies. 

He didn’t bother to explain that he was an atheist with Buddhist practices. “Thank you.” 

"I always wanted Pepper to marry a doctor," she said, carefully placing one of her rounds into a pie tin.

Bruce wasn’t sure what to say to that.

"I think a doctor would be really good for her. Someone who is smart and sweet and supportive and not too big for his britches." Mrs. Potts spoke with a firm nod of her head.

Bruce nearly choked trying not to laugh at that backhand description of Tony. “I think she’s happy, now.”

"Oh, no. No. She’s not happy. She’s got a big time job, but that’s not what she wants. What she needs is someone who will take her for whatever she is, instead of trying to turn her into some kind of captain of industry," Mrs. Potts was frowning, presumably at her pie, but then she looked Bruce squarely in the eye. "Someone stable."

Bruce had a hard time keeping a straight face at the idea he was the stable one. If only she had known who was helping her to make mashed potatoes, she would go into the living room and give Tony her blessing on the spot. 

"She likes you, you know," she said.

"She’s been a very good friend to me," said Bruce, shifting his weight from foot to foot. He glanced up at Mrs. Potts and she was pinning him with a piercing gaze. "She and Tony both." 

She frowned and shook her head and went back to ruffling the edge of her pie crust with a savagery the activity didn’t really warrant. “He thinks he can charm everyone just because he has money,” she muttered. “Having congress on speed-dial doesn’t make you fancy and important, you know,” she said to Bruce. “He’s probably as big a crook as they are.” 

"He’s a good man," said Bruce. "And he actually is kind of charming. I know he comes across as…larger than life, but…"

Mrs. Potts turned her sharp eye on him, again. “Are you gay or partly gay? “

Bruce looked at her. “I’m not sure partly gay is…”

She interrupted him “Mildred’s son is partly gay. She said he talked like that about boys, sometimes, before he came out.”

"What if I was gay or, uh…partly? Would that exile me from your hospitality, Ma’am?" he asked as humbly as he could muster.

"Of course not!" she said indignantly. "We aren’t backward here, you know. There are two gay couples at my church and some lovely girls who live together. They have three lab-shepherd mixes. Those dogs are just the friendliest happiest pups…" 

Bruce wasn’t sure if they were now down a different conversational alley or if the friendliness of the dogs was supposed to convey something about their owners. For that matter, he presumed that it did. 

"Well, they sound very nice," said Bruce. "So your church is a supportive place?" 

That got her on a panangyric about the church, the good works of the church, the priest, the choirmaster and all the goings-on of the congregation. He tried to nod and smile and ask questions in the right places. He was surprised how easy he found it…like family, even if it wasn’t, really. And the doings of a small-town Episcopalian congregation seemed so manageable, almost soothing compared to the cloak-and-dagger politics in which he seemed to find himself embroiled most often, now. 

A tiny voice in his mind piped up that it reminded him of his mother. Suddenly, he felt profoundly sad. 

"If you excuse me, ma’am, I have to use the facilities." 

He barely noticed what she said in response as he took off his apron and walked down the hall. By the time he came back out, the ache had dulled to its normal background level. He went and leaned just outside the doorway to the living room. Tony and Pepper were standing in the middle of the room, gazing into each other’s eyes. Bruce paused, not wanting to interrupt their moment. 

Pepper saw him, though, and smiled. Tony turned his head to see what she was looking at, and strode over with his usual enthusiasm. He reached out and touched Bruce, one hand on his waist, the other on the back of his head, and kissed him soundly. 

Bruce pulled back, startled, and stared at him. Tony’s face exploded in a grin, and he pointed upwards. 

"Mistletoe, big guy. It’s a rule. See?" 

He took advantage of Bruce’s stuned silence to kiss him again. Bruce found himself leaning into it. The kiss turned open-mouthed and filthy just as Mrs. Potts walked into the room. “I knew it!” she said, triumphantly. “I knew you were partly gay.” 

Bruce absolutely did not have a response to that, right now. The evidence was on her side. He searched his mind for anything at all to say in a situation like this. 

Pepper was looking between her mother and Bruce, clearly trying not to laugh out loud. She ran over and gave Bruce a kiss, too.  

"I knew it!" her mother crowed, again. "I knew she liked you." 

Pepper did not stop kissing him. 

Tony went over to Pepper’s mother and wrapped an arm around her shoulder, leading her back into the kitchen with his best performance of charming and accomodating. “Margey, let me come help you.” 

Pepper pulled back and took in Bruce’s face. Bruce’s brain still hadn’t caught up with what was happening. 

"You like me," he finally said. 

She smiled and nodded. 

"And I am, apparently, ‘partly gay’," he added.

She laughed. “My mother is very insightful.” 

"Is this a…what just happened?" he asked her.

"Well, you just got kissed," she said. "That’s all. That’s all it has to be, if you want."

He gazed into her eyes looking for some clue as to what it was she wanted him to say. “I honestly don’t know,” he admitted. 

"There’s no hurry. In the meantime, we’d better get into the kitchen before she kills Tony," she said. 

He stopped her, with a gentle hand on her arm, when they were halfway across the room. “What if I did want…more?” 

She looked back at him, and smiled. Her body flowed into his and she kissed him, again. This time, full of promise. “Well, we can talk about that,” she said. “Tony and I already have.”

"You have?"

She nodded and smiled. “At length.” 

He could feel blood rushing into his capillaries and blush creeping across her face. “Your mother seemed to…uh…take this in stride.” 

Pepper laughed. “Better than you did,” she agreed. 

"I don’t know. I think I’m…taking it pretty well," he said. He took her hand, gently, and squeezed it. He tilted his eyes up to look at her and smiled. 

She looked at him, searchingly, then smiled, again. “Good,” she said. “Merry Christmas.”

He chuckled. “Yeah. Merriest I’ve had in years.” He felt warm and full and welcome and…relaxed. 

Her smile softened and she reached up to run fingers through his hair. 

"Good," she said, and dragged him into the kitchen.


	6. The third time.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Once he starts to settle into regular bedroom hijinks with Pepper and Tony, Bruce feels a little awkward.

The first time was all urgency and hormones and nerve endings sparking. The second time was the next morning after the three of them had awoken in a heap and was languid and delicious.

It wasn’t till the third time, when they had had to plan it that things started to seem a little awkward. 

First of all, they were three very busy people, and they had eventually had to put it on their calendars. This was Pepper’s notion and while Bruce merely quietly admitted it really had to be done, it made Tony snicker with indecent glee every time he looked at his calendar. 

When they finally got there, Pepper was fresh from a long day at the office, Tony was just out of the shower after a day in the lab, and Bruce had spent the day taking advantage of the NYU library system and doing a load of research. They all made it to the bedroom more or less at once, Pepper and Bruce practically bumping shoulders at the door. 

Tony, who was dressed in nothing but the towel wrapped around his waist gave Pepper a long, deep kiss. 

Bruce sat there, awkwardly, not sure what to do with himself. He wasn’t sure whether to watch, not watch, or what. He sat on the edge of the bed and fiddled with his shirt cuffs, buttoning and unbuttoning them. He wound up watching the kiss in spite of himself. 

Finally Tony broke it off, he was breathing heavily. He grinned at Bruce and came over to give him the same treatment, yanking him to his feet. He caught Pepper grinning at them out of the corner of his eye.  
Tony eventually released him. He held out a hand to Pepper and they kissed, as well. Tony practically dancing with impatience. 

"Enough with the soft and sweet. Let’s get to the hard and dirty!"

Pepper laughed at him. Bruce chuckled, too. “Is that a specific sex act or a general urge to action?” asked Bruce.

"It was the latter, but if you want a specific sex act, we could invent one. I’m good at inventing things," the billionaire engineer said with a grin and, now that both their eyes were on him, dropped his towel dramatically.

"Oops. I’m naked. You two better catch up in a hurry or I’m starting without you."

Pepper, who was already slipping out of her crisp suit and hanging it up, laughed again. “Go ahead, I brought back-up.”

Bruce unbuttoned his cuffs one last time, undid the rest of his buttons peeled out of the shirt and dropped it to the floor. “Does that mean I get first dibs?” 

Pepper raised her eyebrows, “On what, exactly?” 

"Doesn’t matter. Answer is yes as long as I get to watch," said Tony from the bed. 

"Who says we have to take turns?" asked Bruce.

This time it was Tony’s turn to raise his eyebrows. “You want to invent our sex act?”

Bruce laughed again. “Yeah, but if I have a hand in this it should have my name on it, not the arbitrary thing you said earlier.” 

"Be careful. He’ll only give you twelve percent of the credit, even if he agrees to put your name on it instead of his," said Pepper, undressed now and crawling up to straddle Tony’s legs. 

Bruce slipped up behind her. “Well, as long as I can take the rest out in trade, I think I’m good with that.”

They all laughed. It was really, really good. Bruce didn’t feel out of place again, that night.


End file.
